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This waxworks museum was founded in 1882 and retains an old-fashioned charm. Kids will get most enjoyment from seeing celebrities from the world of pop music and film, although there are wonderful tableaux from French history.

The Bois is home to two race courses. To the west is the Hippodrome de Longchamp, where flat racing takes place including the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (see Fête du Cinéma); in the east, the Hippodrome d’Auteuil holds steeplechases.

This institute was founded in 1980 to promote cultural relations between France and the Arab world. The stunning building (1987) designed by architect Jean Nouvel features a southern wall of 1,600 photo-sensitive metal screens that open and close like a camera aperture to regulate light entering the building. The design is based on the latticed wooden screens of Islamic architecture. Inside are seven floors of Islamic artworks, from 9th-century ceramics to contemporary art, and ancient astrolabes used by astronomers of old.

An unusual feature is this designated garden which brings together more than 400 different varieties of iris.

The 17th-century royal medicinal herb garden was planted by Jean Hérouard and Guy de la Brosse, physicians to Louis XIII. Opened to the public in 1640, it flourished under the curatorship of Comte de Buffon in the mid-18th century. It contains some 10,000 species, including the first Cedar of Lebanon planted in a French tropical greenhouse, and Alpine, rose and winter gardens (see Cedar of Lebanon).

This 19th-century garden has a series of greenhouses where ornamental hothouse plants are grown. In the centre is a palm house with tropical plants.

These gardens were first laid out as part of the old Tuileries Palace, adjacent to the Louvre, which was built for Catherine de Médici in 1564 but burned down in the Paris Commune of 1871. André Le Nôtre redesigned them into formal French gardens in 1664, and they were opened to the public. At the Louvre end is the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, erected by Napoleon in 1808. Here is also the entrance to the underground shopping centre, the Carrousel du Louvre. Nearby, sensuous nude sculptures by Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) adorn the ornamental pools and walkways. At the far end is the hexagonal pool, the Jeu de Paume gallery and the Musée de l’Orangerie, famous for its giant canvases of Monet waterlilies.

This 25-ha (60-acre) park is a swathe of green paradise on the very urban Left Bank. The formal gardens are set around the Palais du Luxembourg, with broad terraces circling the central octagonal pool. A highlight of the garden is the beautiful Fontaine de Médicis (see Molière Fountain). Many of the garden’s statues were erected during the 19th century, among them the monument to the painter Eugène Delacroix and the statue of Ste Geneviève, patron saint of Paris. There is also a children’s playground, open-air café, a bandstand, tennis courts, a puppet theatre and even a bee-keeping school.

An amusement park tucked away at the north end of the Bois de Boulogne, with roller coasters, pony rides, puppet shows and two children’s museums. On Wednesday and weekend afternoons, journey here on “le Petit Train”, a steam train from Porte Maillot.